I'm sure they're doing their best

Drew 00:00

Okay.

Paul 00:00

Okay.

Drew 00:01

Here's why I was late. You're two minutes you're only two minutes l two minutes late. No, listen. If you're if you're not if you're not early, you're late. Right. On time is late. The reason I was late is as I was getting ready to join the call, I noticed in the little riverside window that it said 1080p 30 frames per second. And I was like, we gotta get those numbers up. And I looked everywhere to see if there was a setting for it. And I don't believe there is. No.

Paul 00:30

I mean 1080-30 is fine. It's fine for you. It's fine for you two. Fine. It's fine.

Drew 00:35

Fine. It's fine.

Paul 00:36

It's supposed fine I mean, I think my webcam can do 4K.

Drew 00:40

Yeah, mine can too. And I love that. I love that for us. People should see how ugly I am in 4K.

Paul 00:46

Yeah, I don't think there is an option. to I don't think Riverside lets you. I'll look into that for next time. I'll look into that for next time.

Drew 00:57

That would be so helpful. That'll be so much. Yeah, well now, I mean it's it's it's a brain worm that I can't like get rid of.

Paul 01:07

Gotta have 4K. Gotta have it all.

Drew 01:08

All the K's. Gotta have all the all the K's. Okay. Uh I wanna I wanna go on a patent, I wanna pop off on a patent to Drew computer rant. Let's do it. Uh I'm really f I'm really fucking sick of modern games and the Unreal Engine.

Paul 01:24

I I have heard this most recent version of Unreal is especially not great. Very resource intensive, very Yeah.

Drew 01:32

Okay. So there's there's been two games now that have just caused my computer to completely fucking crash. Really? And that doesn't happen. I I have played many a game. I have I have used uh animations and other things that are unreal based and I've never had a problem until maybe like Six months ago, I started noticing there were certain things that were doing it. There's two games I'm playing on my computer right now. One is this game called Drive Beyond Horizons, which is just Annoy Your Friends Simulator because It's literally you and your friends get in a car and you just drive in the desert. Okay. That's it. That that's that's the game. That's the game. Uh but what happens is in that game You I'll everything will be fine. I can launch the game, I can play it, and then anywhere from five minutes to thirty minutes later, my monitors just go blank. Like just complete video crash. I still have sound. Still have sound. If I'm on Discord with my friends, I still have audio. Like everything still works. Just complete video crash. The other game crazy is this uh military game called Greyzone Warfare. Again, it is the more recent Unreal engine. Phenomenal looking game, beautiful game, same symptoms. It just it just complete loss of video. And there's nothing I can do except hard reset my computer. And that one's really annoying because it's kind of MMO-ish. So like if you die, you have to do a corpse run. Anyway. So I've been looking into this and uh and and here's what I know. I know that apparently a few NVIDIA driver versions ago There was a problem. And it had to do with certain systems, and this was like a symptom of it. And Unreal is blaming Windows. Windows is just like Whatever. Deal with it. Yeah. Deal with it. And and I just want to read you a list of some of the potential solutions to this problem. Okay? Okay. Let's start with some of the more mundane ones Turn off IPv6. Why would that make your game crash? Why does the so a Apparently Okay, maybe the network stack has a bug or something. Exactly. There's there's something in the network stack with hooks into events in the Unreal Engine that can potentially cause crashes to your game. Okay, turn off IPP6 I'm still crashing. Okay. Next potential solution. In Windows, turn off transparency effects. Apparently, there is some background process in Windows for like the window compositor that has a hook that if it's called at the exact same moment that Unreal is trying to call it. You can have an audio video crash. I turned off transparency effects. That helped for one game. It did not help for the other. Now we're gonna get into more annoying solution land. Okay. I like to play my games in borderless full screen. Do you know what that means? I'm vague.

Paul 04:40

It's been a while since I've I've really gotten to like the different modes of but basically that means like there is no there's no window chrome.

Drew 04:47

You're playing full screen like if you do your entire no mod yeah Yep. And if you do something like Alt tab, you're literally just capturing the cursor away from the game window. So if I want to bring it over to my other monitor. It's literally just dragging that across. It is literally just the game running in a borderless, non-framed window that just happens to be full screen. And there's advantages to running in that mode. Um a lot of them have to do with things like refresh rate, native refresh rate. advanced monitor technologies like NVIDIA G Sync and low latency mode. Like there's advantages to running in that mode. One of the pro one of the pro solutions is use exclusive full screen. Tried that. Didn't help. Um the other potential solution, and this is what I haven't tried yet, is apparently the Unreal Engine doesn't like it if you overclock your memory. Okay. Now, Paul, what's one thing you know about me and computers? You like to tinker I like to tinker and I like and I like to squeeze performance out of my computer. Now here's the thing. Since time immemorial, at least in the past decade, when you were going to build a computer, you buy a motherboard And that motherboard has a spec. Like the chipset on the motherboard has a specification. It is, these are the processors I support. This is the default speed of memory that the manufacturer recommends. But memory manufacturers are complicit with motherboard makers and to some extent the people who make processors, so AMD Intel. That, hey, I know that we said that it runs at this speed, but if you want to make it run faster, we can actually put profiles on the RAM. Okay. That all you have to do in your BIOS is pick the profile and I'll take care of all the settings. I'll set the timings, the voltages. You don't have to tinker. These are these are known accepted limits. And in fact motherboard manufacturers put out a list of supported memories at different speeds above the minimum. What I'm trying to say is this is this is this is settled law. This is accepted practice. This is something that has existed forever. And now the makers of the Unreal Engine are going to come along and say, yeah, just turn all that off. Just turn all that off. Turn all that off. We know better. We know better. Yeah, the Unreal Engine doesn't like that. Hmm. That's like my red line in the sand. I'm not gonna do that because I mean in this economy, I I'm not gonna go buy new RAM, right?

Paul 07:38

Fuck I know, right.

Drew 07:39

And Every other game, every other game engine doesn't have a problem with this. So that's where I'm at right now. I've gotten some level of stability in the game that I really want to play, but I I'm like Uh just like the the 60 frames a second or the 4K on the on the webcam, it's now a brain worm that I can't not think about. Yeah.

Paul 08:00

So Drew, give me one second with the listeners here for a second. Okay. Dear listeners, this is why I don't PC game. This is why console. I have consoles because I don't want to deal with this shit. Sorry. I'm back. I'm back. Okay. You're back now?

Drew 08:16

Okay. All right. I hope you had a good time with the listeners. I did. I did. Yeah. But you're right. I mean this is this is table stakes for PC gaming. Um don't get me started on NVIDIA driver support for Linux. It's like basically non-existent. Yeah. I I have I have a known state configuration for my AM machine right now, and I'm terrified. Absolutely terrified to upgrade any packages right now because I've been I've been bit by that where I've upgraded packages and it breaks some of my my local AI workflows. So like everything is just pinned right now. And like I run Fedora and apparently Fedora 44 is having all kinds of problems and I'm like I know I'm gonna click the wrong button and it's gonna upgrade me and it's gonna break everything and I'm gonna be really sad. So yeah, computers. Computers. Anyway, hi, how are you? Good. Good. Yeah. Yeah. I was on an airplane this week.

Paul 09:10

Ooh.

Drew 09:11

Yeah.

Paul 09:11

I mean, that's free common for you.

Drew 09:13

Well, sometimes. But um I had a full-blown panic attack on the plane. Oh no. Yeah, I had to go to New York earlier this week. Um, I forgot to add this into the show notes. It's just something that I wasn't sure I was going to talk about this or not, but whatever. So Drew has a panic attack. So Oh no. I had to go to New York uh for work and I've been traveling a lot for work these last few weeks and I've I've taken some flights. I've I've driven a few times. Um and I I have medicine. Like don't get me wrong, I have medicine. So I had to fly to New York and it was a very, very quick trip. So I flew out early Monday morning, meetings all day Monday, mandatory fun Monday night. Back at it Tuesday morning and then my flight was at three o'clock uh the following afternoon. So it's just whirlwind trip, right? Very efficient. And after being on the road for a while, I was like, yes, I I could have stayed later on that Tuesday for later sessions, but everything that I had to do was on Monday. So I was like, I just want to go home. So I flew out Monday morning and the flight was actually pretty fine. I didn't have any problems. I took my medicine. Um I watched, it was a quick one-hour, 30-minute flight. It wasn't very long. Uh everything was fine. Got to New York, got downtown, um, had meetings, and then it was time to fly home. Now, listeners, if you've been listening to me a while, you know that I'm just not, I'm not a person who enjoys flying anymore. I don't like it. Um I have apps that I check. I have the the the turbulence app on my phone so I can look at turbulence advisories and pilot reports. Um and I've also started using this other app called Turbly. We might have talked about this before. Did we talk about Turbli? I don't think so. Okay. So Turbly is interesting. It is a it is a web app where you can go and you can actually look up your flight. Okay. So for example, if you're on there, you can say, hey, I'm going from CMH and I'm going to JFK and I'm going tomorrow, for example. The data that is used by this website's only forty-eight hours, I think. Uh so it'll list all the different flights that are leaving from Columbus and going to Uh New York. So for example, Delta 5656, that was the same flight number that I was on the other day. So like if you click that, what it's gonna do is it's gonna show you the planned route. Okay, like the proposed flight route. And then it's going to give you sort of a graph representation over time what you can expect for turbulence. Okay. Okay. So for example, the flight tomorrow at takeoff, it's gonna be light, and then right before you get to cruising altitude tomorrow, it's gonna be super bumpy. Now, I've I've read enough about this stuff to know that this uh has to do with a lot with like low like local weather patterns and a lot of times when you're taking off, clouds are a constant source of turbulence. So if it's a cloudy day and you're flying through clouds, it's gonna be bumpy pulling out of an airport. Uh and then when you kind of get into cruise mode, you can see that it sort of stabilizes and then it starts to go back up again whenever uh you're starting your descent in a new New York. And that that to me is a moderately bumpy flight. You can see that it's very firmly in the moderate section. It sort of gives you predictions if they if they reroute or change altitudes. They kind of give you a band of what you can kind of expect. So I check this, you know. I I can't help but not check it. I know that it would probably be healthier for me not to check it, but but this is what I do. So anyway, uh flight there, flight there was fine, flight back, uh, you know, we're we're on the tarmac. It wasn't a very crowded flight. And the captain came on and said, you know, hey, just so you know, it's gonna be kind of bumpy pulling out, but once we get up the altitude, it's not it's not gonna be bad. It was extremely bumpy pulling out of New York because a weather a weather front was coming through, like a cold front was coming through. So we were flying through clouds and um there and and again this is this is also why living in Columbus kind of sucks because If you've ever and I don't and you probably haven't because this is my mental and it's not yours, but like if you've ever if you've ever watched um air traffic controllers when they're giving departure instructions to aircraft. So if they clear an aircraft for takeoff, they will give them like wind direction, wind speed, they'll clear them for takeoff, and sometimes they'll say things like caution, wake turbulence. Because if a really big airplane takes off before a small airplane, that turbulence has to be factored for. So the pilots need to be aware that there's going to be extra turbulence from all the eddies and currents coming off a larger plane that is taking off or landing before them. Well, right before we were supposed to take off, and again, this is why flying from Columbus sucks, is you're always on a tiny aircraft to these airports. Always, always, always. Unless you fly southwest. You're always on some shitty little tiny um regional aircraft versus a larger, more stable aircraft. So you are you are much more at the whims of turbulence of of anything else. So it was extremely bumpy pulling out. And then we got to altitude and it started to kind of smooth out. So like I, you know, I was breathing, I was calm, I was starting to calm down. Um and then, you know, he even turned the fastened seat belt sign off, which is which is a great sign because that means that if if the pilots are doing their thing, what they're doing is they're looking at weather ahead because they can actually look at at weather in their uh in their cockpit. They have their iPads that show them current weather. Pilots ahead of them are also telling other pilots like, hey, watch out for this turbulence or whatever. And uh pilot reporting is something that you can actually go and look up, but Turning the fasten seat belt on is a huge sign of relief for me because that usually tells me, Okay, Drew, you've made it, you're good But then uh I think we hit some clear air turbulence, which was the absolute worst, because that's the stuff that nobody can predict, right? Oh wow. It got it got extremely bumpy. He made the flight attendant sit down and like for the last 30 minutes of the flight, we were being bounced around pretty pretty aggressively to the point where like I was hyperventilating. And I'm glad that no one was sitting next to me to witness my my meltdown, but like That was the first time I've had an actual meltdown on a plane in a couple years. So, like, I I feel like I'm getting better, but what I'm trying to say is like these events still trigger me. And it's just really hard for it not to. Hmm. Anyway. That was that was my big thing. So I have to go back to my doctor and probably get a stronger anti-anxiety medicine, I think is the moral of the story. Which is pretty awful, but it is what it is. Anyway, enough about my problems. What are what's going on with you?

Paul 16:08

Uh well before I got a story to tell you. Uh before I do that, uh just let everyone know, my son's on his way home for the summer Already? Yeah, they're done. They're done. They had they had to move out today. My wife went down after work. I would I would have joined her, but I was at Stur Trek that local conference today. Oh, was that now? Yeah, it was today. Yep. How was that? It was good. It was good. A lot of uh No s not a lot of surprises, a lot of AI talk. Yeah.

Drew 16:35

You know, I was having this discussion with friend of the show, Brent, because he's noticing a trend where more, where fewer, I guess the right way to say it is fewer and fewer people are going to conferences. How was Sturtrek? If if you you've been to Stur Trek, right?

Paul 16:48

Yeah. There were only six sponsors this year. Six like six tables with sponsors. Wow. Us my company being one of them. It's it's it's dying. It's dying. Yeah. But but I want to tell you I want to tell you a story, Drew. I'm gonna tell you a story And there's a visual component to this story, so if you're watching uh on video, I'll find a link, a way to way to get you this this picture. Okay. So a few episodes ago, I talked about my Eero signal. Cellular internet backup. Okay. Yep. I have been very happy with this product. It has saved my butt a couple of times when my internet has dropped. Okay. So generally, I am happy with this product. Yeah. Tuesday, I went into the office. So I'm not home. And uh a little after lunch, I get a notification from my phone basically saying, hey, all of your home hubs are unavailable, which is Apple's polite way of saying you no longer have internet at home. And I and I'm doing all the mental calculations in my head. I'm like, well, if my main, if like my main internet provider is down. Right? Uh my it my cellular backup should be on, so I should be able to connect things. And I did some basic stuff like, you know, fired up taroscale, try to connect to things, and nothing's online. So I keep doing this math in my head. I'm like We must not have power. That's gotta be it. The power has to be off at the house. Okay. Okay. That that's that's my that's my mental calculus

Drew 18:15

That's pretty pretty good safe assumption, yeah.

Paul 18:17

Okay, okay, which which happens, right, you know, it's it's fine. But like my daughter's coming home I'm from school and I'm like, well, you know, if the power is out, I don't want her like accidentally opening the fridge or anything. So I'll just leave work now and try to get home as close to when she gets home as possible. So I get home a little after her. And I open the door and front door, and I'm like, huh, the power is definitely on. Okay. So what is wrong? Drew, I'm going to text you a picture right now.

Drew 18:48

Okay.

Paul 18:49

Okay. Ready. Okay, hold on. Uh Is it is it is is this gonna be show art? Uh uh you know I can make this chapter art. I'll find a way to get this on the website. Okay? Okay, I'm ready. I got my phone. Okay.

Drew 19:02

Oh. Um That okay. So this is a crime scene. Uh this is a photo of a crime scene. Mm-hmm. Which one of your cats did it?

Paul 19:21

So I know exactly who there's only one I only have one cat to choose on. Okay, okay. I thought you had multiple. Okay, okay, no, but So uh so the picture I sent is clearly a cable that has been chewed into two completely. By a cat. Now let me explain how the Eero signal works. So typically you have an Eero, it comes with a power supply, you plug it in, right? It's like a 25-watt power supply. When you get the signal, Things are a little different. They say that it comes, the signal has this big cable that comes out of it that is permanently attached to the signal. Okay, and then they give you a new power adapter and part of that cable there's like a little Y connector. So you plug the power the connect the the 45 watt power connector into this and that powers both the signal And the Eero from one cable. My cat chewed through that cable. And if I'm looking at this right, it's like a splitter, right?

Drew 20:21

Yeah.

Paul 20:22

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So Basically, it chewed through the part that I cannot replace. I have to buy a whole new Eero signal to replace this particular because it's built in. It is can is is not a removable cable. It is part of the Eero signal, right? And so I'm doing this and I'm like, well shit. Like, you know, I I I unplug everything and I'm like, this is a 45 watt, like Power thing. Yeah, is your cat okay? Now I'm thinking, am I looking for a dead cat? Or a cat that walks with a limp? I mean yeah. So I get my daughter and it's like, okay, like we need like we need I know which cat it is. I know it is. But I'm just like, just in case, I gotta find all of the cats and just generally assess their health. All the cats are fine. No there's no injuries. We check their mouths. There's like because sometimes people get like electrical burns in their mouth and stuff from that stuff. I don't know how this cat Just manage to survive not getting. I mean, maybe, maybe he did get a little bit of a shock. And if that's the that's the case, good, maybe we'll stop fucking chewing on cables.

Drew 21:32

So it's it it's a forty-five watt cable, but how many amps?

Paul 21:35

Uh yeah, uh that I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But Still, yeah, yeah. So uh I no longer have cellular internet backup.

Drew 21:48

So it so it begs the question, I mean Is there like some sort of warranty replacement program?

Paul 21:56

I have I have like my cat fucking chewed at the cable. Can you give me another one? They'll probably be like, well, I mean, but maybe

Drew 22:03

I I I feel like that's kind of a design flaw, right? Like most most appliances have detachable power cables, right? Yeah. So does this mean you're just done? Like is and you want to go buy the thing?

Paul 22:16

I mean it I got it for like half price when I got it. Now I'd have to spend like full price on it I maybe I'll just send an email after the warranty and say, like, hey, like Is there any option at all here? Or am I just screwed? Heck, even just give me another $50 off, I may buy it again. But

Drew 22:35

Yeah, so how many times did have you actually had to I know you've had to use it once.

Paul 22:43

Uh I've just it's kicked in prob probably like three or four times now Uh you know, I still wish the kickover was a little quicker, but like, you know, my internet will drop for like five seconds. It's like, oh your internet's down. I mean, I get it not wanting to do it immediately, because sometimes just like pings are high because, you know the internet and has to reroute. So like generally goes like, I'm pretty confident your internet's down and then switches over. Yeah, and it's really helped.

Drew 23:09

Yeah. Because like too aggressive.

Paul 23:11

Mm-hmm. Like I'll drop out of a team's call for a few seconds and then come back on. And like it's it does I the way I have it configured that like basically uh the cellular backup is only for daddy, it's only for my stuff, right? Like I don't let the TVs use it. It's basically just my work stuff and my NAS and things. And Yep. And critical stuff. So it's it's just really just for work emergency kind of stuff. But it I mean it's I've used it a few times and it it has worked great, like for what it is. uh, you know, just in a pinch. And I haven't had to use it for long because usually then my other internet comes back online and it switches back over and it's like, oh, you're back on your main internet. And Uh but yeah, yeah. Uh cat destroyed my cellular internet backup, which may be a brand new sentence. That's wild, man. That is that is so wild.

Drew 24:02

Wow. Absolutely pretty wild stuff.

Paul 24:07

Mm-hmm. So there it is. Yeah. So check the show notes or check the chapter art for the picture of my cat. Uh the the wire that my cat chewed through. It was it was a good time. Eh. Wild.

Drew 24:19

Okay. I want you to talk about this because I'm very on the fence.

Paul 24:24

Okay, so uh earlier this week, the latest expansion for Diablo 4, Lord of Hatred, has come out.

Drew 24:35

Actually, real real time follow up. I I just got an email from Blizzard telling me that it was out.

Paul 24:40

So don't tell me this isn't listening to me. Okay, so I just want to say I am still playing. I have not got this week has been busy. I have not got to put the amount of hours that I typically like to do when like a new season or something drops for Diablo. I'm a little light. I am still in the main expansion campaign. I think I'm maybe a little more than halfway based off the amount of the map that I've unlocked and and where I feel like I'm at in the story. Uh so I haven't done endgame. I haven't got to play with like the new crafting mechanics or anything like that. So pretty much Mike's Mike's so One of the things they did in this expansion, uh, d well, the game is completely different from the launch game at this point. Just just absolutely bonkersly different. Uh the big things in this expansion is they totally revamped the skill tree for all the classes.

Drew 25:35

Okay.

Paul 25:37

And the the big the the big so the old skill trees used to be about like okay so you pick like a handful of skills and then the skill tree was just full of passives, right? So passive thing just like buff stuff. So it's picking the right passives and and building doing your build that way. Yeah.

Drew 25:57

Yeah. Now at this point, I'm gonna come in and say that the last time I played Diablo for Um and part of this is my own fault because I was playing a barbarian.

Paul 26:07

The arsenal system is weird.

Drew 26:08

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I I it was it was partly my fault. I bounced off it because like as Paul said, the systems around it were are we are or were.

Paul 26:18

Uh, the arsenal system is still there. I I did play a Barbarian last season, and it was that that part's pretty much the same. It's basically like barbarians have like four different weapons at all times and you can assign different weapons to different skills and there are certain synergies like around like if you switch your switch your weapon six times and you get twenty percent more damage for a bit. Like yeah.

Drew 26:39

So my my little uh addled peace sized brain can't think of combining all those different things. And again, this is tangentially related to the fact that Drew never wins board games when other friends play with him, because that's not the way my brain works. So Yeah. I would just go look up a guide and it it would literally tell me go go put these here.

Paul 26:59

I have no qualms. I mean I use build guides all the time. Okay. Uh I'm I f Typically what I do for like something like a new class is I'll get like I'll look at a few build guides, kind of get inspiration, and then like do like the the the the the beginning of the game when you're like zero to z level zero to seventy and then I'll do a build guide for later with the paragon because paragon gets so fucking complicated and there's hundreds of things and I'm like, I just want someone to tell me which way to go. I don't want to think about it. Right. So Okay, so the new skill trees, all the passives are gone. They're just gone. They're just gone. So it's all just picking your skills, and then there's just more options. You can like Uh one of the canonical examples is like the sorceress, right? The sorcerer. There is a hydra, and you can cast hydra, and hydra is fire, and it was fire all the time. Well, now in Lord of Hatred, you can go, well, you start with a fire one, but then you can change it. Maybe you want it to be cold. Maybe you want it to be poison. Maybe you want it just to change random elements and do all kinds of weird shit. And there's just more, more variety there. And all of the passives come by uh this talisman symbol. You get a you get a charm and unlock so much talisman slots and you find talismans, you put them in there, and that gives you kind of your bonus. So they moved it more to gear. Right. And there's a whole bunch of other new mechanics at the end game, war plans for endgame stuff, uh, like this whole new crafting opponent. I have not touched that at all because I have not finished a campaign and that stuff does not unlock. until you beat it. So I've just played and I'm playing the new class, Warlock.

Drew 28:36

And uh wait, I thought Paladin was the new class.

Paul 28:39

There's two new so okay. Lord of Hatred introduces two new classes. Now, technically, if you pre-ordered the expansion, you could have played Paladin last season. Okay. Okay, which is bonkers. This is bonkers, Jew. Okay. Because They basically created two skill trees for Paladin, one on the old way, and now a new one for Lord of Hatred, which is just absolutely blows my mind that they did that, going like, well, this is this is gonna be totally throwaway. Uh but you know what it it works. It really works. The skill it skill trees are fun. It feels like your choices matter. It's just not like, oh, and now I do six percent more damage.

Drew 29:23

Yeah, one more one more percent to whirlwind.

Paul 29:25

Why not? Uh-huh. Like it it don't feel like that. Uh I'm playing like a pure summoner warlock, so like The screen is just absolutely bonkers as I'm literally like opening up like my main skill is literally you open this portal above like your shoulder and this stream of demons just go out and explode. Right. And then like the ultimate is this huge the biggest the biggest thing I've ever seen in Diablo burst out of the ground and just start swinging this huge store sword and it stays on the screen way too long. Like It's one of those things like when when I like they did this with the Spirit Born too when they introduced that class. Like they don't care about balance when they introduce a new class. It's just like Have fun. Have fun. Right. So it's completely overpowered, but like I said, about halfway through the story, the story is good. It's uh it's I'm looking forward to kicking Mephisto, the Lord of Hate, the titular Lord of Hatred's ass. Uh And from what it sounds like, like this this this will be the end of this story in Diablo, like that the the the the the hatred chill it trilogy with with with Lilith and all that stuff. And I'm just hope I'm hoping I I've avoided spoilers. But god damn I wanna fucking see Diablo because I've not seen Diablo in the game called Diablo yet. Show me the goddamn Lord of Terror. I want to kick his ass in the next expansion. Thank you. Uh but like right now, if you if you haven't touched it in a while, the Lord of Hatred expansion also gets you the Vessel of Hatred, which was the previous expansion. So you just one price, you get everything.

Drew 31:02

Uh yeah, I have it on I have it on Steam, so let's see here. So you're telling me I go to Diablo 4, I go to the store page, uh, I have it. So you're saying if I buy Lord of Hatred, which is $39. 99. Um I noticed that there is the titular standard deluxe ultimate. What does that give me? Guess which one you uh get you more uh I know I know which one you bought, but you know,

Paul 31:30

The ultimate gets you a premium battle pass unlock. It gets you some more cosmetics. Uh, things like that

Drew 31:38

Okay, cosmetics, deluxe edition, you're not quite as shiny.

Paul 31:42

If you don't care what your character looks like, I would just I would not do it. Just take my take on my what? A hundred dollars for it?

Drew 31:52

Just just take this take it. Two two town portal skins, two reactive back trophies. Steed of the Shining Realm mount, cross class armor bundle, 3000 platinum, which I guess is just premium curves. That you spend in like the marketplace for it it's all cosmetics, right? All cosmetics. All cosmetics. Yeah, there is no pay to win or anything. Yeah. Scorch mini chimera pet Premium premium battle pass bundle. Okay, now hold on. Battle pass is usually something you gotta buy extra. So deluxe maybe makes a little sense.

Paul 32:24

So how the seasons the how the seasonal stuff works now is uh There's kind of two two parts. One, there's this the there's the seasonal journey, which is basically you do this stuff, you get in-game rewards, right? You get an extra skill point, you get some cosmetics, or you get a cash full of gear. And then you also, as you play, you also earn favor tokens, which you can spend in the seasonal reliquaries, which is basically a big block of cosmetics, armors, weapons, mounts. And what it is is usually there is there's four. There's like the the the seasonal-based one, weapons, armors, and mounts. And the seasonal-based one is always free. You can unlock anything in there with your favorite tokens. But if you want access to the other ones, you have to play platinum and that unlocks the other Reliquari so you can get all of the cosmetics. But the nice thing about it is, is like even if you don't like don't like the cosmetic from this season, you can collect favor tokens and those roll over to the next season. Right. So if you collect a whole bunch, there is a limit to how many you can have. Uh, but it like you're like, uh, this stuff's garbage. You can still play, get those favorite tokens, and next season maybe there'll be an armor set you really like. You can go, I'm gonna unlock that right now. Boom. Uh But yeah, all of that stuff is just it's purely, you know, cosmetics. Uh you know, portals, armors, weapons, mounts. Uh Okay. Yeah, yeah. I just unlocked this. I just unlocked this cute little p oh and pets. Pets pets are fun too I unlocked this uh cute little spider they call Tickles. Uh He just he runs around and and gets, you know. Though I did go back to uh I did unlock uh a they the last season they had like also also you can get Doom cosmetics. And I got one of the the flying skull the flaming skull as a pet, which is nice. They just started today, or I think it was today, a uh huge Ward of World of Warcraft collaboration, so you can unlock a whole bunch of like World of Warcraft you can well excuse me, purchase. These are all for purchase. You can purchase these really cool looking World of War World of Warcraft mounts and skins and stuff. It's like, yeah, but They are a little, I think I think if I mean obviously I'm wrong because I think if they lowered the prices they'd make more money because more people would buy them. But apparently I know there's a fucking actuary in there doing the math and going like No, we're fine.

Drew 34:57

Yeah, we're making shit ton of money. Yeah. People are people are spending money they shouldn't. Yeah. Yeah. Everybody's irresponsible. I get it. But if you like, you know.

Paul 35:09

I'm not gonna say that Down Black is easy, but it's definitely easier than things like Path of Exile and stuff. I would call it more of like a blaster action RPG. It's a f it's a power fantasy. You get in there.

Drew 35:19

There's hundreds of things that I haven't but I haven't enjoyed Diablo since Diablo 2. Yeah.

Paul 35:25

And I and I I want to play Diablo three.

Drew 35:27

I thought Diablo II was cool.

Paul 35:32

I mean this is more Diablo 3 than Diablo 2 for sure. Uh but I don't know. It's good. Scratches my itch, man.

Drew 35:39

I just want to be a good thing. Let me be clear. This is a game I want to like. I want to like it, but every time I've installed it and played it, I've just completely bounced off it. There's just too there's too much. There's too much. I'm way too employed to be able to learn all these systems.

Paul 35:59

Like I can't what I uh what I would do is just pick your favorite. Like I personally do a lot of like max roll, max roll at DG, I think Like what I would if you're interested in it, get the expansion, get up just just roll a paladin, pick, pick like a hammer of ancients build on there. And just follow it and just just rip shit up. Cause it is uh it is not a it is not a hard build to play and it's basically just like point press button things die. Or if you want to get really bonkers, uh there's this uh Uh I think it's I think it's still very viable. The Spirit Born, which is the the the first set of new classes they introduced with the first expansion, there's a build there basically called the Evade Spirit Born, and you just dodge And as you dodge, like you just drop bombs and sh and like shoot out feathers and things just you just you just dodge around and things die. It's great. It's like a one button one button build. Dodge dodge dodge dodge dodge. Death death death. Yeah. But I mean the the Not okay, the the the storytelling of Diablo is not for everybody. I get that. I love it. I love the lore. I love the the general concept. I love just everything about it. And uh Yeah, there's there's there was there there was a moment in this game where I literally like gasped. It was like, yes, because a character came back from Diablo 3 and uh yeah Okay.

Drew 37:33

Now is that gonna be lost on is that gonna be lost on me because I never really finished three?

Paul 37:37

No. Okay. No. But did you you played the beginning of three though, right? Yes. Yeah, you'll be fine. But even then, even in the even if you didn't know, it's it's fine. They they they do all the like the who are you and they explain their backstory, but I'm like, I fucking know who you are. As soon as I saw you But I heard the voice of the voice actor. I was like, fuck yes! He's back.

Drew 38:06

Oh boy. Okay. All right. All right. It's it's I I c I clicked I clicked the install button. I did not buy the DLC yet. So it's It's downloading right now. It will show up in my Steam library. Maybe I'll play it.

Paul 38:21

And you know, if you want someone to sit there and walk you through, if you want to even want to I can I can join your game. I mean It has crossplay, so like as long as I know your ID, we can join. And if you want to stream if you want to stream some content or whatever, I can I can help you play.

Drew 38:36

So Feel like maybe that's what's missing. I feel like if I was playing this game with somebody, it'd be a hell of a lot more fun. But you play it solo though, right?

Paul 38:44

I do.

Drew 38:44

I do.

Paul 38:45

But I would no I have no problem playing with somebody else. Even if you want to go through the whole goddamn campaign, I would I would just sit there and roll with it and watch the freaking cutscenes with you and and answer your questions and yeah. I might pick you up on that actually.

Drew 39:00

You know how I love content.

Paul 39:02

I'd even drag my microphone and my laptop up to my where my PlayStation is and give you good quality audio if you want to stream it on Twitch. So I'd figure all that shit out for you, Drew.

Drew 39:13

For you. Uh, buddy, I love you. Okay. All right. I maybe maybe I'll spend sixty dollars this weekend. We'll see.

Paul 39:21

You don't have to, but just say it's It's good. It's good.

Drew 39:26

Okay. Uh shifting gears real quick. I know that we're big clawed boys on this podcast.

Paul 39:31

I am a big clawed boy.

Drew 39:32

Yep. And I am too. I I've I've been using it more, um, primarily because my work has a subscription that they have like a wrapper around for it, and uh I pay for a personal subscription. So do I. Um, it looks like that they cut off people from the subscription that you and I have to Claude Code, right?

Paul 39:50

I have recently upgraded to the hundred dollar a month tier.

Drew 39:55

I mean if but you uh I'm okay with that because like you're building using the fuck out of it. Have you really? Okay, so like okay. So okay, so quick deviation. So what what do you got going on? Is it is it all in service of your app or

Paul 40:09

I've really picked back up my coffee app again and I essentially had it rewrite giant chunks of it and it's It's man. It is I mean it's impressive. It is, it's really fucking impressive. Like I'm not gonna say that like code is a solved problem, but like okay, you know what? I will say Writing code is a s a problem that AI has solved. It has not solved the running or managing of software yet. Yep.

Drew 40:54

But a debugging of software. Even though it can't write tests.

Paul 40:58

Yeah. But yeah. I mean, yeah, and there's you need guardrails and you need to constantly like I mean, I've been a big I I'm a firm bel I I just don't I don't do anything without a plan first. I go into plan mode, I have it, I tell it what I want, I work on the plan and like get everything like this exactly what I want to do, and then I'm just like Do it. And then I walk away for ten minutes.

Drew 41:23

And it's uh and it and it's and it's gotten it mostly right for you?

Paul 41:26

Yeah. Yeah. Pretty it's pretty good. Pretty good.

Drew 41:29

Yeah. I'm not doing anything crazy with it. I mean I can imagine that, you know, if people who don't use plan mode or people who uh just say, you know, don't make any mistakes, and then it just goes and hallucinates or whatever. But Um but anyway, going back to what I was saying, so I'm still on the $20 month plan and I still have access to code, but it looks like new users can't sign up for that anymore.

Paul 41:51

Yeah, they're playing with that, yeah. And they've really limited the quotas for the the pro plan. I mean they they're just they're just running out of They're ha their demand is higher than the amount of compute they have, so they're they're doing everything they can until they get though Amazon just gave them a shit ton more money. So hopefully that will help. So I don't know where Amazon's amazing.

Drew 42:10

Well, I mean, they can have all the money in the world, but there's no there's no data centers or capacity to buy, right? They have all this money, but they can't spend it on anything. Yeah. Well anyway, uh so that being said, um I have been dabbling with the Google offerings for the past week and a half.

Paul 42:29

Uh Gemini's pretty good.

Drew 42:31

Gemini's pretty good, but but uh but there's a reason for it, right? So um I'm good friends with somebody who owns her own business and her entire Her entire business, with the exception of seeing patients and clients, is completely online. Contact forms, emails. Um posting to social media, follow-ups, scheduling, like everything is done through online portals for her, mostly on the Gmail platform. So I I'm not being mean when I say that like her organization skills, right? Like she knows that that's something that she needs to work on. And you know, she's learning, she's AI curious. She's learning about it. Her other people in the business, her other people and other businesses that she associates with are starting to lean into it more. And she wants to lean into it too. But previously she would use things like ChatGPT to create like an image, or she would just ask it a question and have it do research. She hasn't really used it in service of her business per se. So she's looking for ways to do some automation. So like here's a perfect example. She has like a contact me form on her website, which is all built in Squarespace. Uh, which then sends an email to her inbox. So like one of the things that she wants to like try to figure out is like, hey, if I get a form response, Based on the responses, I want I I would either immediately send them a link to my schedule book to schedule something or I would need to interject and do like a follow-up. And I'm like, well, I was like, that's a perfect use case for AI. And she's like, well, do I need Claude? And I'm like, well, no, because one, you want it to directly interact with your email. So we should look into what does Google provide for that level of automation? So, long story short is that when you want to get into the Gemini ecosystem, um, first of all, Google makes it super confusing. Okay, let's just get that out of the way right now. So So Drew the person has a Google account where I pay $1. 99 a month or something for. I don't know. Drive space or sow. Get more storage. Like it's it's like very, very little. So like Drew the person has A Google account. Drew the consultant has a business with a Google Workspace plan.

Paul 44:53

Yeah.

Drew 44:53

And when you start to figure out, like, well, where do you want to use Gemini? the the paths diverge very quickly. Okay. So Drew the consultant bought it because he can write it off, but bought it over on his business. And Some of the tools they give you are pretty cool. So just to walk you through it real quick. So like there's basic Gemini, which is sort of like Chat GPT. You get a chat window. Hey, go, I I need help with this. It goes and does it. Or generate me an image. Generate me a video. Generate me a podcast. Like That's where you can do all that stuff. It consumes tokens and you have your limit. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Paul 45:30

Dude, I I personally I have found here's here's my favorite workflow. I want to generate an image. I use Claude to help me write the prompt that I give Gemini.

Drew 45:44

So um So again, as somebody who invested heavily in the local AI setup, remember I have two GPUs in my machine, right? So I've got an LLM running on one and I'm using the other one for image generation. So it's like if I need to generate an image, I load up, and there are models specifically designed to help you with prompt generation for images, depending on the image you want to create and the model you're using. Fire that up. I described the concept. It generates a very detailed formatted image prompt that the model expects. And then I just pipe that over to Comfy UI. It's brilliant.

Paul 46:18

It sometimes gets a little grumpy, it's like I could generate that image. I'm like, no no no no no no. No, no, you don't understand.

Drew 46:24

You don't understand.

Paul 46:24

No, I'm gonna give this to Gemini. Just write the fucking prompt.

Drew 46:30

Yeah. You you really should look at doing some stuff locally to save. I mean, I know you have all the tokens in the world, but Yeah.

Paul 46:36

I I just don't want to build an I mean and Yeah. I and and not to I just want to build I don't want to build a beefy enough machine to really do that. Yeah. I mean your Mac mini could do it. It's only 16 little gigs of RAM. I don't know. I don't know.

Drew 46:52

You could do it. Yeah, you are. But anyway, so that's that's the that's the basic thing. Now That doesn't necessarily solve the problem that I'm trying to solve for her, but they also make um what is called Google Workspace Studio. Okay. Ooh. Okay. Yeah. So um maybe I can share my screen with you. Can I share my screen on this app? Because it's probably just easier to share my screen. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Share screen. Okay. Um window? Yes. Share. Let me know if you can see that. Ooh. Ooh. I can. I can't. Yeah. So automate your work with Gemini. So like Like here's an example, right? And this is what I've been sort of kicking around. It is a very visual designer for it's like when I get an email, right? If it's a specific email from somebody, right. Then it's okay based on that, you know, then you give your prompt and you can plug in inputs from the previous steps And tell it what to do. And it's like, hey, if if these things meet, here's send it, you know, craft a reply that includes the scheduling link, and then you can like add All sorts of things. There's all sorts of skills that are already built for it to talk to the entire G suite of things. So perfect, right? Like this is exactly what you need.

Paul 48:17

And then it says, hey, get an email if it matches these criteria. Send them a link. Otherwise, like Let me know and I can yeah. Yeah.

Drew 48:23

Check if filter, yeah, everything, right? Uh and then you can also plug it into any agents that you've built on Gemini. So they call them gems. So you can do that too. Like you can like there's there's things to build this in. And this is like a very, very rapidly evolving Um it looks great. Really evolving product for Google. So like this this solves like 90% of the use cases that she has. But then they also have what they call Google AI Studio that you get access to. Right. So now we're we're on the third AI product that they offer. And this is where you go to like build apps. So like for example, I was like, let's say, because like the what I just showed you is great, but it won't actually send the email. It'll draft it. You have to review it, but it doesn't actually send it. I don't know if that's a guardrail or like it's just not unable to do that yet. But like if you want to actually build an app to do this, right, like this studio is like their coding agent, right? Um I don't know what this is, why it's on my screen. Um you're in a tutorial. You're getting tutorialized. Yeah. It's still doing something. But like I told it like I want to build an I want to build an agent that can automatically analyze and reply to certain emails in my inbox. And then it's like You know, and it walks you through what it does and how it does it, and then it goes and creates it, and then it spits out an app, right, where you can initialize the connection and it'll do the rest. So like this is where you can go to actually build things and again um there are apps you can build there's also galleries of stuff that people have built you know for different things And then in Gemini itself, you can create gems that let you like you know give your gem a name and then describe like what you want it to do. Um you can give it knowledge. I mean you're basic it's basically just like a little baby's first agent type thing. So yeah, so I've been I've been playing with this. I mean it's it's perfectly fine. I mean Gemini's always been pretty solid. Um Would I replace c would I replace this with like Claude in my workflow? No. But this is like because I'm already on a Google Workspace plan, like um what are what are the what are they charging me per month? I'm part of some promotional thing right now. Um If I go into billings, subscriptions.

Paul 50:51

Now I have heard that I'm gonna try this on my LA trip. Google has added Gemini to maps. Oh. Which I've heard it's really it's bet better than like Doing like a search, you can say, like, hey, I am looking for a cafe that serves pour over coffee that I can just sit for a few hours and do some work. And it does more than just looking at the listing. It looks at like what people have said about it, what's on the internet, you know, and then actually like gives you recommendations based off that kind of stuff, which I think is great.

Drew 51:27

Yeah, I mean and that that's Apple's direction, right? Like they're in bed with Gemini, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, so like I'm part of what they call AI expanded access, which is like the middle tier. The other one is like crazy expensive, but like It's $16 uh until August, right? So I have till August to play around with. After that, it's only 20 bucks a month. So it's like I pay for this and I pay for Claude and I get all sorts of stuff, right? And they're pretty generous too. Like the the amount of things that you get in this, so like you get access to like nano banana. They also have notebook LM. I don't know if you've ever played with that

Paul 51:59

I have. Yeah. Yeah.

Drew 52:01

So they get access to that too. So it's like you get you get access to a bunch of stuff with it. I mean it's it's it's reasonable, especially if you have like a Google Workspace account. Now If you want to do it like on your own plan, um, it's similar. I you don't get that workspace studio piece. I think that is only tied to workspace subscriptions from what I understand. And they make it really hard to get to it. Like it's not part of like your app list. You have to know the URL. Oh wow. That's the stuff that like just pisses me off. I was like, can't you just make one thing? Why do we have to have so many things? Yeah. Yeah. So anyway, I've been playing around with that and like my my one of the things that I'm working on is being able to go back to her and say, look, here's your options. Like She you you have Google Workspace, like you know, pay the extra twenty dollars a month instead of going and buying Claude because you're like she pays for Chat GPT. She now she could I I was like, you could just pay for this, like this does all the same stuff. You probably get a better rate on it because you're a workspace user. So makes sense. And the fact that it's already integrated with things like Gmail and you know Yeah.

Paul 53:02

I've I've used Gemini and Gmail to find something. I just searched I could not get the right search terms into that text box. to get it, but like I describe what I'm looking for and five seconds later Gemini's like, is this it? I'm like, yeah.

Drew 53:18

Did I do it, Dad? Did I do it?

Paul 53:20

Yeah. I think this is it. Like, yep, that's the fucking email. Thank you. That's the email. And is and it's like, well, you asked for this, but really you were looking for this. Like that's why I couldn't find it. Yeah, you're just like, but like Yeah, you stupid human. How dare you? It can make those leaps and connections.

Drew 53:35

So it's all right. Last topic of the night. Uh new calculator drop.

Paul 53:43

The world's premiere calculator podcast right here. I I did usually when you put a link in there, I resist until it, but I saw that. I'm like, I have to click on this right now.

Drew 53:54

Yeah.

Paul 53:54

Yeah.

Drew 53:56

Uh This looks like maybe another calculator we've looked at in the past.

Paul 54:04

I wish I wasn't broken in the ways that I am broken. Like there's just some really weird design choices they made.

Drew 54:13

I know. Let's talk about it. That's why I put it here, right? So let's talk about it. So what jumps out at you?

Paul 54:20

I do okay, so what we're looking for is the TI-84 Evo graphing calculator, which I guess I'm guessing there was some focus group like we need to take our graphic calculator, but Mill make it more millennial friendly? I don't know. And so it's got a color screen, which which is which is nice, but like the first thing The first thing that bothers me is the shape of some of the buttons

Drew 54:55

Yes. Some of them are square. Yes. Most of them are not.

Paul 55:00

Yeah, and and like it looks like they are trying to do like this like rounded thing on the edges. But like, and the upper right hand corner is a little d-pad, so like it doesn't quite like it's not consistent all the way, and then it just like Mean that blue second button that is curved in that way, it just draws your eye and it's just rog. And then the the the row of buttons before that that do the curve on the bottom to kind of be like, we're part of the screen. I just, I don't know. And like Also, there are color choices on those dark buttons. I don't think there's enough contrast there. I'm I'm getting really old and my eyes suck so I'm really big on like contrast. Like that was my I I pity anyone who sat beside me as heard her today because almost always I was like, wow that font that that slide's really hard to read. They picked some shitty colors there I'm just like, yeah, this is this is how I'm broken.

Drew 56:03

Yeah, and and they they really like blue and green. Uh-huh. Like it's a color display. Yeah. It looks like there is some it looks like there is some like Yellow. Maybe it does all the colors. I don't know.

Paul 56:16

But like everything is guessing it's a f it's gotta be full color, right? It's gotta be. If we have that many colors, why why why not all the colors? How much does it cost?

Drew 56:26

Uh like $119. So like when you go to um oh there's a there's a button in here that says where to buy. I looked at it earlier. Um let's see here, where to buy. So individual purchases, graphing calculators, TI-84 Evo. Yeah, so like at Office Max, it's $164. It's $160 on Amazon. Okay. I guess you could buy it at Myers if you hate yourself. Um Yeah. Um now. There it is.

Paul 56:57

Yeah. 160 bucks on Amazon. Yep.

Drew 57:00

Okay. Now, uh while it was on the website though, so first of all, um I I like a good graphing calculator. I would never use it. But I like it. I like the idea of it. So I saw that and I was like, you know, we've talked about graphing calculators here before. We both bought that uh numworks one, right?

Paul 57:18

The yellow one. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I would still buy that.

Drew 57:21

Yeah.

Paul 57:21

I would still buy that. I know exactly where mine is. Like I haven't needed it for a while, but when I do, I know where it is. Yeah.

Drew 57:27

Uh so while you're on the Texas Instruments website, though. I want you to go to products and I want you to go to graphing. Okay. And I want you to do the TI inspire CX2.

Paul 57:40

Ooh, what is that? Okay. Okay, this is a definitely a calculator-ass calculator. Okay, hands-on learning for math and science. So definitely targeted towards, it looks like for classrooms. Man, that I mean that looks like a Go ahead, get it out. It's complicated because you look at that and you're like, wow, that's a fucking lot of buttons. I bet you I can do all kinds of sh weird math with that. And that screen looks great. And then there's just this big old zit in the middle. Yeah, I know. Of that that weird ass D-pad.

Drew 58:21

Yeah.

Paul 58:22

With they tried to do that thing that remotes used to do where like you have a four-away D-pad, and then there's a like a button in the middle that you can push to to to go. Yep. Yep. I mean, I guess like Texas instruments are like like, hey, we're approved for the SAT. What are you gonna do? not have a calculator? Fuck you. Right. Right.

Drew 58:50

Right. Right. Right. Like.

Paul 58:53

And then they also have the TI inspire. Where's the Apple of calculators? Yeah.

Drew 58:58

Yeah. I mean it's Texas instruments versus everybody though, right? Yeah.

Paul 59:03

Yeah.

Drew 59:05

Yeah. I saw this one and this one is a little I don't know. I like the look of I

Paul 59:10

I think the the Inspire CX2, it looks better than the EVO.

Drew 59:15

It does. It does look better. Uh-huh. It does look better. And it's not that much more uh than the other one. So like when I go to where to buy for that. Uh graphing calculators, uh T I inspire CX two um Yeah, it's $138 on Amazon. It's actually cheaper than the other one, which is interesting. And it looked like it looked like it was a more feature-rich calculator. I don't know. I mean, and my my TI-84 that I used in college, or TI-83, I should say, is over on my desk right now. Like that's what I use right now. Like that still works. It still has all my shit programmed into it from like all the classes I took in college. I know, it's crazy. I can't believe I still have that. Yeah. Oh boy. Anyway, that's that's that's that's everything that's new in calculator land, because you know us, we we're suckers for a good calculator. Yep. Well, buddy, that's an hour. Yeah, let's do it.

Paul 1:00:13

Let's wrap it up. Uh doingtheirbest. com. You can find all the show notes, links, links to our YouTube videos.

Drew 1:00:20

And hey, thanks for listening.